


hurry home to you: team ny drabbles

by bittennails



Category: Boardwalk Empire
Genre: (if grudging), Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, F/M, Gen, Haunting, M/M, Multi, Past Abuse, Reconciliation, Trauma Recovery, mild BDSM themed, new york as living graveyard, team ny ghosts au, very loose spectral worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:28:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23719729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittennails/pseuds/bittennails
Summary: A series of Team NY drabbles.Chapter 1: Charlie/Meyer. Team NY Ghosts!AU. Left to haunt their city, Charlie and Meyer visit an old friend.Chapter 2: Charlie/Meyer. Haunted by memories of his childhood, Charlie yearns to be grounded by someone he trusts. Meyer will always be there to hold him down.Chapter 3: Charlie/Meyer. Team NY Ghosts!AU. Reunited in death after estrangement in life, Charlie and Meyer make up for lost time.Chapter 4: Odette/Charlie. A few days before Dannemora, Odette exhibits mercy.
Relationships: Charlie Luciano & Arnold Rothstein, Charlie Luciano/Odette, Meyer Lansky & Arnold Rothstein, Meyer Lansky/Lucky Luciano
Comments: 10
Kudos: 18





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part of a larger Team NY Ghosts!AU. Meyer and Charlie visit an old friend.

It was Meyer’s idea to wake up Rothstein, although Charlie wished he hadn’t.

(The dead, after all, seldom sleep.)

Still, Charlie hadn’t even needed to see the look in Meyer’s eyes before he’d leveled his gaze at the window on the far side of their room, embarrassed with the sudden tilt of emotion inside when he grumbled out “fuck, all right, Meyer.”

They’d found him, eventually, in the corner of a small bookstore that still smelled of the long-gone bakeries off Mulberry and Mott - his soul curled around an antique armchair. He looks better than he ever had in his last trembling years, and something in Charlie - the part where he keeps the memories of his bloody knees and how it had felt to have a hand pressing into his neck, to _teach him respect_ \- had spread inky and black inside him. Until Meyer reached out to squeeze his arm.

Death is treating them sweeter still than their lot, with the ease that they form a seated trinity at the table upstairs - three pairs of rough hands as, for once, all hands are revealed without expectation.

Meyer grabs Charlie’s hand over the table and runs his thumb over the knuckles, and Charlie feels a warmth heavy in the pit of his stomach. Listens to the midday echoes of the stone city around him - the distant sounds of the living, and the affectionate, close voice saying _boys_ like it’s still 1920 and they’ve just walked into Lindy’s. _To get away from the cold._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments are love.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Haunted by memories of his childhood, Charlie yearns to be grounded by someone he trusts. Meyer will always be there to hold him down. TW: for past abuse and PTSD.

They haunt him still. 

Those dark, hallowed places where he’d been taught that keeling begets forgiveness (first, scrubbing floors, and later, in Joe’s office - a hand tangled in Charlie's dark hair to force his head _down_ ), where old men spoke their language like a eulogy, and it had always been known that if you weren’t willing to show shame, your blood would always do. 

So, the first time he kneels willingly - alcohol bitter on his tongue - it makes sense that it’s for a man who grew up with none of these things, who loves his own religion despite the pain, who has killed for him, who cups his jaw in small hands and _sighs_. 

Sometimes, even now, he wakes up choking on sulfur (they’d had no frankincense growing up, but their church was was never without smoke and dust), clawing at hands that aren’t there, and it isn’t until he hears a voice telling him _charliecharlieitwasjustadream_ , feels strong fingers on his shoulder, that he’s able to rest again. 

He has never felt holy, but on nights like this, with a familiar body curled around him, the city forms a chapel within itself.

And he allows himself to taste it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Catholic guilt really jumped out in this one! Mainly Charlie gen., I know, but I had to add the Meyer/Charlie as the comfort to the hurt. Joe and all the other Moustache Pete's are gross. 
> 
> Comments are love.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team NY Ghosts!AU. Reunited in death after estrangement in life, Charlie and Meyer make up for lost time.

At night, their souls curl into one another.

It hardly matters where - a bed in the Waldorf, a cramped landing off Hester, the branches of one of the many trees that had grown thick and tall near Charlie’s mausoleum - because every time he wakes, Meyer is less and less surprised by the arm thrown around him, the absence of pain in his chest.

Less surprised, too, at the firmness in Charlie’s voice when he tells Meyer “ _I love you, I love you, I fucking …_ ”

After all, they’re both making up for lost time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Miami? Italy? Everybody's favorite BWE ship living their final years on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean? 
> 
> Yeah, fuck that. I'm gonna shamelessly take canon reality and supplant it with my own. 
> 
> Comments are love.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set few days prior to Dannemora. Odette, in her infinite mercy, comforts Charlie.
> 
> Implied sex and one-sided dominant behavior. No non or dub-con.

He still smells like Gay (her love, her skin, her _pity_ ) when he brushes into Odette’s flat, hands moving to her hips as he steps through the door, hitching her nightgown up over her waist before she manages to pull him to the couch.

She’s seen the papers, of course - did not avoid the headlines, despite what she’ll claim later on. She saw the sentence. Thirty years in Dannemora. The shaking of his hands in the mid-July heat comes as no surprise.

Tears are, though. Salty damp he leaves between her thighs ( _good boy_ , Odette thinks) and then her cheeks when he begs up to kiss her.

Long ago (likely after her first few clients, although she no longer cares to remember) Odette had looked forward into the long hall of her life and cultivated an Iron mercy for the world - that yearning, hungry thing that rises from below her feet, like so many reaching Men. Recognize pain with dispassion and you can find the thorn in the paw of every sharp-tooth dog.

Remove the thorn, and you have a pet for life. A warm, thankful thing. 

He's warm with fear when she curls around him from behind. One hand pressing into his belly; her nose brushing against the delicate juncture in his neck. " _Tell me I’m not gonna die there_ " he had said during their coupling, words as absent as a thought, as a sigh. She had found it cruel, to make such a promise. _A woman's promise_ , Odette's father would have called it. Weightless. Unsubstantiated. 

Better to send him off with a reminder. Something he can _feel_. 

Charlie's neck marks easily when Odette bites him, tasting sweet with the hint of blood and aloewood cologne under her small, sharp teeth. He cries out weakly, seizes in the tight circle of her arms, though they both know he won't break free. 

Odette gentles him with her small, soft hands. She feels the darkening beauty of the wound and, mercifully, hopes that it will scar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Channeling my frustration re: HBO's treatment of female characters into bitey and dispassionate Odette (and trembling submissive Charlie). 
> 
> Comments are love.


End file.
